Over at Prosblogion, Helen De Cruz gives an engaging analysis of one of scripture’s most invoked grounds for conviction, testimony:
“Undefeated testimony: the kind that occurs in the absence of at least the following common and probably most characteristic defeaters: (1) internal inconsistency in what is affirmed, as where an attester gives conflicting dates for an event; (2) confused formulation, a kind that will puzzle the recipient and tend to produce doubt about whether the attester is rightly interpreted or even has a definite belief to communicate; (3) the appearance of prevarication, common where people appear to be lying, evading, or obfuscating; (4) conflict with apparent facts evident in the situation in which the testimony is given, as where a person shoveling earth over smoking coals says there has been no campfire; and (5) (discernible) conflict with what the recipient knows, justifiedly believes, or is justified in believing.” It is a bit ironical that new testament scholars and latter-day defenders of the argument from miracles take the historical perceived unreliability of witnesses as evidence for the reliability of the testimony.
Read the rest here
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Greetings on a Morning Walk
Blackberry vines, you hold this ground in the shade of a willow: all thorns, no fruit. *…
An Outline of Trees
They rise above us, arching, spreading, thin Where trunk and bough give way to veining twig. We…
Fallacy
A shadow cast by something invisible falls on the white cover of a book lying on my…
